Wednesday, August 10, 2016

My wife dropped a hint last Sunday at breakfast. “Maybe you
should check the camera traps this morning so we can get to the restaurant on
time.”

I got the message. It was our 50th wedding
anniversary.

It was a little after 8:00 when I finished packing my rucksack,
and that’s when I remembered that the only time I ever walked up on a bear was about
this time in the morning.

It was a harmless amusement – I could hear mother bear high-tailing
it down the slope and splashing across the creek, while her 2 cubs set a record
descending a big old Douglas fir. I can still see them backlit in a haze of
falling bark and dust. No way were they going to be left behind.

But fate can be ironic, and a fleeting thought -- “Bear mauls senior citizen on 50th
wedding anniversary” -- cautioned me to take the bear spray (a birthday
gift from my younger daughter).

And how many times has someone pulled their bear spray
trigger, found the canister empty, and

witnessed their deliverance in painfully
surreal slow motion?

I had better test it.

I pulled the trigger guard and squeezed ever so briefly . .
. WOW!

The 10-foot plume of red pepper gas told me it wasn’t a dud.

And a moment later I found myself in the dilute invisible backwash.

And so did my blinking dog.

Sneezing and with one runny eye, we beat a hasty retreat
into house.

The pepper cloud followed us into the kitchen with the cool
air that funnels through the screen door in the morning.

Suddenly the redhead appeared, “What’s that smell? We’re
being gassed!”

“I just tested the bear spray, Sweetie, and it works!” I
coughed, “It’s not really THAT bad (cough).

She hurried off to get a dust mask, and I decided it was
time to make our exit.

The rest of the day was a charm. We encountered no bears, arrived at the restaurant on time, and recounted our bear spray episode for family
entertainment.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

I finally got it:I
cam-trapped a weasel in its dashing white winter camo.

But as you’ve noticed, it’s sticking out like a sore thumb
because there’s no snow 2 feet underground where the picture was taken.

I’ve wanted that photo since I learned that weasels are
frequent but uninvited guests in mountain beaver tunnels.

Wouldn’t it be cool to show a winter weasel without the
benefit of its winter backdrop of snow?

How do you get that picture?

You can nature-fake it – just live trap a weasel (no small
feat) and photograph it on soil and leaf litter set in a cage.

Or you can set a camera in a mountain beaver burrow.

But there’s risk and a technical challenge to leaving a
camera underground in a rodent burrow for half a year.

You have to supplement the camera’s normal battery power so
it can take flash photos for 6 months. (I wired 4 external batteries -- 2 D and
2 C cells -- to the camera for back up power, and used 2 9-volt batteries to
power the controller.)

And you have to retrieve your camera before spring snowmelt
floods the burrow and drowns the camera or buries it in silt.

I was ready to deploy in the fall of 2013, but procrastinated,
and the snow shut me out that winter.

I procrastinated again in 2014, but it was a drought year,
and I got away with setting the camera in early November.

Disappointment came the following May when I discovered the
batteries died 45 days into the bargain and before any weasel made an
appearance.Murphy’s Law.

Last winter I had the camera in the ground on October 7th.

The camera had been out 8 months when I drove to the site a
couple weeks ago with Bill and Diane Wilson.

Our timing seemed okay. The snow was gone at 6000 feet, and
the Forest Service road was dry.The
only thing that was worrisome was the Yuba River, which was already roaring
from snowmelt.

At 7000 feet snowdrifts blocked the road.

“Wait here Bill, I think it’s within walking distance.”

I skirted the drifts on the road, but it was solid snow at
the creek, which was a choppy gusher.

This was not a good sign because the camera was in an alder
thicket on a silt bench a few yards from the creek and only a few feet above
water in summer.

A few minutes later I found the alder thicket; normally 8-15
feet high, it was flattened by snowpack.

I’m standing there thinking it would take a team with
shovels and spuds to expose the camera, when I see a bare spot and a piece of weathered
plywood.

It was the cover over the tunnel and camera.

I tugged it free like a crazed treasure hunter . . . and “Damn
(expletives deleted)!”